Has spoken to Wallace to see if reluctant to accept a Government pension. He would accept if CD and Huxley believe it justified. Encloses details of Wallace’s efforts to obtain a position as naturalist and his claims for a pension.

Response to CD’s notes [on Island life]:

1. On relation of paucity of fossils to coldness of water;

2. Cessation of the glacial period;

3. Rate of deposit and geological time;

4. The importance of preoccupation (by plants) in relation to plants arriving later.

Charge of speculative explanations is just.

Defends plausibility of migration of plants from mountain to mountain.

Thanks RC for telling him about sale of 600 copies [of Movement in plants]. He had expected less, so loss will not be as heavy as he feared. Asks whether he should not have 250 more copies printed and what it would cost to have the type kept up.

Instructions for presentation copies.

The index is the worst ever published.

Believes the flexure in GM’s dead animals must result from the greater strength of the muscles on the left side. Thinks his son George once tested the strength of each leg of a group of boys, and CD could get his notes if wanted.

Thanks for information about Wallace. Is preparing memorial to be submitted to Government [seeking pension for Wallace].

Movement in plants needs only the index. Distressed by CD’s dissatisfaction with the indexer.

Eight hundred copies have now been sold. Type will be kept up.

Decision on printing additional copies should await reviews.

Sorry he forgot the gardener’s address. Having a very nice time in Cambridge, and is almost finished the bramble paper. Drawing room is upside down, so living in Horace’s working room and dining room. Greek question was lost in the Senate House. George dined there last night. Too muddy to bicycle. Has some stuff for spectacles.

Has found three zones of stones in the Welsh and Pennine mountains which he accounts for by elevation and subsidence. Does CD think that these movements in historical times have been caused by earthquakes or by slow and gradual movements?

Is collecting annual subscriptions for the support of J[emmy] FitzRoy Button. Has only just been told of the death of Miss [Sarah Elizabeth] Wedgwood.

Gives news of some former Beagle crew members.

Sends a copy of his lecture Elemental pathology: an address on elemental pathology delivered in the pathological section of the British Medical Association (Paget 1880).

Reports inability to control depressor anguli oris muscle in grief.

Has read Expression.

Sends draft of memorial for a pension for Wallace with suggested names of signers. Asks THH’s help.

Comments on DM’s ["The Moel-Tryfan shelly deposits", Q. J. Geol. Soc. Lond. 37 (1881): 351–69].

Comments on cause of earthquakes.

Believes formation of ice lowered level of sea.

Sends proofs of Encyclopaedia Britannica article on hybridism [9th ed., 12: 422–6]. Can CD mention authorities who should be cited?

Comments on hybridisation; cites authorities. Sends book by Wilhelm Olbers Focke [Die Pflanzen-Mischlinge (1881)].

Will support the petition for a pension for Wallace.

CD’s paragraph [about Wyville Thomson, see 12796] was so good that if he had written it he would have sent it to the printer, but [for CD] it is best to refrain.

Thanks for information on the slope of ground at Worcester.

CD’s passion now is worms.

Sends Movement in plants. While correcting proof, CD remembered an old article by HHJ, which he regrets not including.

Asks CD to sign his guarantee.

Reports events at Cambridge involving Horace.

Comments on her new book [Life and her children (1880)]. "… you have treated evolution with much dexterity and truthfulness".

Surprising thought that diseases of plants should illustrate human pathology.

Will recommend A. B. Frank’s article in a German encyclopedia, on diseases of plants, to Francis Darwin.

Gives JP a good case of regeneration in plants – the radicle of the common bean. That plants have little power of regeneration is not difficult to understand by anyone who believes in Pangenesis, "if such a man exists … There is reason to think that my imaginary gemmules have small power of passing from cell to cell."

Refers to early experiments in which he tried to produce galls in plants by injecting poisons.